Edita Mwangi, who harvests coffee cherries on the red earth hillside overlooking the processing plant, confirms this.

In the background, a hillside can be seen partially collapsed and a large patch of red earth has been exposed.

To locate the tunnel, forces repeated an Israeli tactic used elsewhere in the strip, overturning mounds of red earth to produce a crater-like hole giving way to a small tunnel entrance.

From behind me, over the din of the propeller, Deborah Fleming, a community historian and my host on Tinian, beckoned me to look left: In the middle of jungle, tractors and bright red earth emerged violently from Tinian’s emerald green.

But after the first, the others were easier to pick out, gleaming dirty white against the red earth and run through with a honeycomb texture.